This time, though, I don’t fall. I thought I’d have trouble hauling the aqualung but its weight balances me. I take the high boards all the way until I’m above the bar, and then I wait up there till it empties and I see Sal come out. And then I wait some more. The misshapen moon circles round for a better look and the wispy ghosts go by.
I slide down a stilt and push through the tarpaulins. Inside it’s pitch but I find the bar with outstretched arms and make my way round it. I reach up to the shelf with my hands, careful not to knock anything glass. I take the waterproof torch from the tin over the bar and switch it on, so I can operate quicker. I put the tin back. I dismantle, as quietly as I can, the Idol by the door, ripping its flipper-ears off and pulling free too some strands of plastic straw I can use, to tie them to my feet. I tear patches off the rubber suit for warmth.
And then I drag everything back up the stilts, tie the flippers to my feet and the rubber patches round my arms and legs. I belt up the aqualung and suck hard on the mouthpiece. The needle on the dial flickers, but doesn’t drop down from the FULL indicator. I pick up the torch and the stick map. Then I lean backwards, knowing I should probably have tried to get down the ladders so I was closer to the water when I fell, but knowing too that the only way of persuading myself to get into the water at all was to take myself by surprise, a pre-emptive strike. With the heavy lung on my back I rocket downwards, overhead and headfirst, and penetrate the water. There’s an immense splash that consumes me before I leave it behind. I’m so shocked I forget to go to the surface, then as I start to sink I begin to panic, until I realize I can breathe just fine. I appear to be all there. All here. Just the map disintegrated in my hand -- I think I crushed it myself in the fall, or perhaps it wasn’t meant to be used underwater. But I don’t need it. I am by the little shell. I am heading for the other shell. I give my flippers a kick and I’m propelled pretty effectively through the murky water. Somehow through all of that I managed to keep hold of the torch in my other hand, and even luckier, the torch works.
I never thought I’d be submarine again, not after the first time. There are two things about the underwater that overwhelm me, only one of which I was expecting and that’s the cold. It’s not like air cold. Wrapping up doesn’t help. The rubber doesn’t help. There are cold currents and warmer currents, but basically it’s cold like death. It presses in. My eyes are wide with it. All I can do is keep moving.
The other thing is the possibilities. A world in three dimensions of a scope bigger than I imagined. Directly beneath the boards it’s not so deep -- I can see the muddy bottom where most of the stilts are buried, and where the bar’s anchor is half buried. The torch can sort of pick them out. But where the Wide Channel is, the water floor just drops sharp away into a trench and it opens out all oceanic and limitless, the water cleaner and the visibility too improved. Then you feel like you’re floating above a great space, rather than thinking about how deep beneath the surface you are.